Nicolas Malebranche

Abstract

Nicolas Malebranche (b. 1638–d. 1715) was a Parisian-born French philosopher and Oratorian. In 1660, Malebranche entered the Congregation of the Oratory—a Catholic order founded by Pierre Bérulle in 1611—and was ordained in 1664. As relayed by his first biographer—Yves André—in the same year as being ordained, Malebranche discovered a copy of René Descartes’s Treatise on Man in Paris and upon reading it was so ecstatic that he experienced violent heart palpitations. Ultimately, Malebranche developed a philosophical and theological system that was intentionally an amalgam of Cartesianism and the thought of Augustine of Hippo. He is among the preeminent continental rationalists of 17th century Europe along with the more well-known thinkers René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. While one must be careful to not import too much into this categorization as it can at times obscure more than it illuminates, rationalism is roughly the view that persons can have some substantive knowledge independent of any sensory experience. Malebranche’s magnum opus—The Search after Truth—was first published in 1674–1675 and underwent numerous editions with substantive additions called Elucidations. Arguably his other greatest work—the Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion—is a beautifully written dialogue and a relatively concise account of his mature worldview first published in 1688. He is especially well known for defending three distinctive positions: (1) Occasionalism, (2) the view that we “see all things in God” (the Vision in God), and (3) a highly original Theodicy. All three of these positions are described in their respective section headings in this entry, but, in brief, occasionalism is the view that only God has true causal power; the Vision in God is the view that ideas, which Malebranche uses in a technical sense and are essential to our perception, are in God; and a theodicy is an (attempted) reconciliation of the existence of evil with the existence of an all good, all knowing, and all powerful God. Malebranche was also active in many controversies, not the least of which was his decade long public dispute with the Jansenist theologian Antoine Arnauld. This often bitter and heated debate was one of the premier intellectual events in Europe in the latter half of the 17th century. Malebranche published his final work, Réflexions sur la prémotion physique, in 1715 and died on 13 October of that same year at the Oratory in Paris.